1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a video tape recorder (hereinafter abbreviated as VCR) for recording and reproducing color video signals of an NTSC system, an EDTV (Extended Definition Television) system, and an HDTV (High Definition Television) system such as, for example, Ill-Vision system, a or the like, on a magnetic tape or the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As home-use video tape recorders (VCRs) for recording color video signals, VCRs of the VHS type and the 8 mm type are widely used. In particular, the number of VCRs of the VHS type used around the world is more than 250 million sets. The VCR is one of the indispensable items in the general household. In these VCRs, for example, an input NTSC color video signal is separated into a luminance signal and a carrier chrominance signal; the luminance signal is frequency modulated by a low frequency carrier, and the carrier chrominance signal is converted to a low frequency band, before being recorded on a magnetic tape. This color recording and reproducing method is explained, for example, by H. Sugaya in "The Videotape Recorder: Its Evolution and the Present State of the Art of VCR Technology," SMPTE Journal, March 1986, Volume 95, Number 3, pp. 301-309.
On the other hand, a method for recording and reproducing a video signal by overlaying an audio signal of high quality in the upper layer of a video signal recording layer is disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 62-249594. In the conventional VCRs, in particular, since the chrominance signal is recorded after being converted to a low frequency bandwidth, the band and S/N ratio of the chrominance signal during reproducing are extremely inferior to those of the luminance signal, so that the reproduction image quality is limited due to the poor quality of the chrominance signal. Especially in a VCR of the S-VHS type in which the luminance signal has a wider frequency band so as to be higher in quality, the quality difference between the chrominance signal and luminance signal is increased.